DEATH IN TURKEY: EXOTIC ISTANBUL IN DENIAL ABOUT ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
by John Warner
Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)
February 8, 2007, Thursday
Surely, of all the cities of the world, Istanbul is the most exotic.
Gateway to Asia. Eastern capital of the Roman Empire. City of Emperor
Constantine. City astride two continents. Religious capital of the
Eastern Orthodox Church. City of sultans and harems, belly dancers
in diaphanous costume. Turkish baths. The Topkapi Palace and the
Dolmabace Palace. Armenian genocide. The Hagia Sophia. The Blue
Mosque. Bektashi and Whirling Dervishs. The Sufis. The Grand Souk.
Byzantium. The mythological Jason passed this way in search of the
Golden Fleece.
Here are minarets and calls to prayer and fine Turkish carpets. Here
Xerxes led his Persian armies into Greece. Here later Alexander
crossed to Asia in his quest to subdue the world. Ataturk. The Ottoman
Empire. Janissaries. "It’s Istanbul, not Constantinople now," we used
to sing. The name was changed in 1453 – the year that city fell to
the Turks. A few miles to the south is the site of the tragic battle
of Gallipoli in 1915.
Earlier this year the city of Istanbul was rocked by the murder of a
noted Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, the 52-year-old editor of the
Turkish-Armenian newspaper, Agos. Dink was gunned down by a teenage
boy, apparently in reprisal for claiming that the death of 1 million
Turkish Armenians was genocide. You are not allowed to say that in
Turkey. You are not allowed to speak of the killing of a million
Armenians in the second decade of the 20th century. And for some
strange reason, the fact of that genocide has never been officially
recognized even by our own government.
I would not mention this, except that it has become an issue in
American foreign policy. There is a push, more on the Democratic
side of the aisle, to assert an official recognition of the Armenian
genocide, sometimes called the first Holocaust of the Twentieth
Century. But in Turkey there is complete denial of that fact, and to
recognize the event in Congress will threaten U.S.-Turkish relations.
The story is told many times over in the dusty books on back shelves
of libraries all across America. It is told a hundred times over on
the World Wide Web. Just go to any search engine and type the words
"Armenian Genocide." Hundreds of grizzly photographs will make your
stomach turn. Starvation. Decapitation. Death marches and macabre
train rides. Pyramids of human skulls. Massacre. Still, it is verboten.
Perhaps you can picture, in your mind’s eye, the region in and around
eastern Turkey, defined on the north by the Caucasus Mountains,
particularly by the tall Mount Ararat – where, according to the
book of Genesis, Noah’s ark first found dry land. Here, between the
Caspian and the Black Seas, dwell dozens of competing ethnic and
language groups. Here today meet the modern nations of Armenia,
Georgia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Here
dwell the Kurds and the Armenians, Muslims and Christians, struggling
throughout the 20th century for statehood, land and recognition.
Caught in the vortex between Russia and the Ottoman Empire.
For centuries the Armenians, Kurds and Turks got along OK. The
Armenians were considered loyal to the Ottoman Empire, accepting with
little protest their second-class citizenship. But with the rise of
nationalism in the 19th century and the demise and "decrepitude" of the
old Ottoman Empire – called the "Sick Man of Europe" first by Russian
Tsar Nicholas I – Armenians began to suffer. While the Turks wanted
to expand their dominion east into what is today known as Turkistan,
Armenians demanded their own independence and national state. They
were an obstruction to Turkish ambitions. In the Russo-Turkish War of
1877-78, Armenians sided with Russia, and Christian Russians supported
their religious brothers. After that war, the Armenians were blamed
for the defeat of Turks at the hands of "Christian" Russia.
On April 24, 1915, hundreds of Armenians were rounded up and gunned
down in the city of Istanbul. One million Armenians are said to have
died in the next three years. But one must never speak of this within
the confines of modern Turkey. It simply did not happen.
Hrank Dink, the Armenian editor, dared to say what could not be said.
He paid the high price for those words. And today there is a renewed
call for recognition of the Armenian Genocide.
I was the first guest to be seated in the coffee shop at the Nippon
Hotel in downtown Istanbul one morning in January more than a dozen
years ago. Seven o’clock. I ordered my coffee and read an English
language newspaper. And out of the window I saw a big black bear on
the city street, leashed to a fellow out for his morning walk. I asked
the waitress. "Gypsy and dancing bear," she said in her pretty-good
English. Surely this is an exotic city.
Dr. Warner, professor emeritus at West Virginia Wesleyan College,
is a Gazette contributing columnist.